I have an Upstart conf file in /etc/init which starts fine if i start it manually like this:

sudo initctl start myconf

If i run it without the sudo command i get the error name=(unset) error, which is due to user privileges, but that shouldn't be the problem when the job is initialised at system boot when Upstart kicks in right? (because thats all run by the root).

...where the server_init.sh runs a python script based server. When i check the status of the script right after i login to shell, it says stop/waiting. I also tried the conf file with "start on net-device-up" but nothing changes. Is there a way to see the Upstart system log or something similar that might help me debug the problem.

Okay, found one way, but it only works if the error happens in the program that is being executed by the script (and if that program of course returns error messages), not Upstart itself, but that is what i needed in this case. What i did was redirect the program output to a log file like this:

exec /spatial/server_init.sh >> /spatial/ogc.log 2>&1

As for the other i found out you can increase Upstart verbosity so if i ll need that, i ll start from there.